Deconstructing Bridges

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"She's still in there," Matthew fumed, his hands tight. Afternoon had turned into evening, and still Bethany had not emerged from her meeting with Owen. Hope was fading fast. The more time that passed, the worse the expected outcome. The chance that he was already too late was front and centre in his mind. The headache he'd been nursing all day thanks to the blows he'd taken to the head had only become more angry thanks to a lack of sleep and the inordinate stress, yet what was he to do? Being reduced to a 'sit and wait' was not at all helping. 

If she was truly dead, surely he would know. He would feel it if she had left him alone. The damage of their last argument rang through him, her determination to push him away and end their relationship, his own refusal to let her go. Had she known something like this was imminent? Was she trying to make it easier? 

"Bethany will be out soon," Eddie attempted to soothe, and all he could do was hang his head.

"Is there anything, anything we might have overlooked?"

Eddie looked down at the report in his hand before letting it fall to the table. 

"We've talked to everyone at Lansow, at his restaurant, we've called all the accountants, any address we've had registered for him or any associates, and there's no sign. Now they're basically all doing sweeps of the surrounding streets, our tech guys are trying to tap into any lines of known... Geez, Matt, I don't even know anymore."

Matthew grabbed the paper to scan it himself before he also tossed it back down. His hands repeatedly raked through his hair.

"You should get some rest, man."

Matthew simply shook his head before standing.

"I try to rest, all I can think of is her. All I can wonder is why she hasn't called, why she doesn't just walk through that door and allow me to keep her safe. Is the only answer that she's already dead? This is all my fault."

His hand covered his mouth as he tried to fight back the tightness threatening to close off his windpipe. 

"Way back when we first... That first day when we realised who Rose Hallam really was, I should never have confronted her like that. I shouldn't have made her run."

"She would have run anyway."

"But it was the first sign, the first thing that went wrong, and I tossed her down. I didn't ask her to explain. I didn't give her a chance, I never gave her a fucking chance to tell me her story. Only when we knew about 'Nichole' did I stop. No wonder she doesn't trust me. No wonder she isn't here with me."

"You guys didn't just have a fight. You found out she lied about who she was. Any one of us would have reacted the same way, and you aren't the reason Marshall blew up that apartment, Matt. Trust me."

Matthew scoffed. 

"Trust you. Ha. How did she put it? 'How to trust a genius who allowed his car to get stolen from under his nose'?"

Eddie chuckled in remembrance of Rose's dry comment as Matthew lowered himself back into his chair. But as Matthew glanced back over at his friend, he watched as Eddie's face went from faint amusement into intense concentration, and then into a slack-jawed expression of shock.

"What?"

"How did she know?" Eddie's voice was soft, tinged with curiosity. 

"Did you tell her?"

Matthew frowned, utterly unaware of what Eddie was trying to get at.

"My car. She knew that my car had been stolen. How? Did you talk to her about it? Because I certainly never told her. And Parker hushed it all up, remember? No one else on the force would have told her. Did you say something?"